


home of the lost

by DJBunn3



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bonds, Family, Fluff, Gen, Home, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Light Angst, Lion Bonds, paladin bonds, red & blue lion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 06:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13851582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJBunn3/pseuds/DJBunn3
Summary: What is a home?Keith wonders this time and time again. At the Garrison. In his desert shack. In the castle. In his lion. In the space he occupies between.He never comes up with an answer.





	home of the lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lionswaps (Pyropesy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyropesy/gifts).



> for [terezees](terezees.tumblr.com) on tumblr as part of the [vld positivity day](vldpositivityday.tumblr.com/) exchange :)

What is a home?

Keith wonders this time and time again. At the Garrison. In his desert shack. In the castle. In his lion. In the space he occupies between.

He never comes up with an answer.

* * *

He meets Shiro when he is a first-year in the Garrison. Keith tells Shiro that his hair is too edgy for his personality, and Shiro says, “Look who’s talking, Mullet.” And then he smiles and introduces himself and Keith pretends that he doesn’t like him, not at all, but he does.

The Garrison is big. There are hundreds of students and teachers and instructors and staff. There are people who turn their noses up at him and people who pull out chairs for him at their table and people who whisper about him behind his back and people who offer soft, warm smiles, like he needs them. Maybe he does.

Hunk is one of the people who smiles. He passes Keith in the hallway and says “Hey, buddy,” and grins. He does it to everyone. Keith honestly can’t tell if Hunk even knows his name, but it doesn’t matter, not really. The effect is the same.

Shiro doesn’t say “Hey, buddy.” Shiro calls him Keith, and sometimes ‘friend’ when he’s talking about him to someone else. He’s Keith’s only friend in the Garrison, and one of the few he’s had in his entire life. He treats Keith like an equal, even though they’re in different years and Shiro’s an amazing pilot and a popular student amongst peers and teachers alike. He sits with Keith at lunch and lets Keith hang out in his dorm when his roommates are being too loud. Keith doesn’t know if this is what home feels like, but he thinks it might be close.

Home isn’t his dorm, he knows for sure. He doesn’t like his roommates, doesn’t want to like them. He just wants them to leave him alone. They invite him to parties and ask him about his classes and are generally nice, but they’re not his friends. Not even close. He doesn’t say this to his face, playing along with their casual buddy-buddy act and pretending not to notice when they treat him differently than everyone else. Just like Hunk’s words, their quiet whispers don’t matter.

He thinks that the closest thing he has to a home is his mind. If that can even be called a home. It’s the only place he’s ever been where he’s felt truly comfortable, truly able to relax and feel at ease. He knows most homes are places people share with their loved ones; warm, real places full of laughter and friendship and family. But he has none of that.

He asks Shiro about his home one day.

“Home? My home is back in Hakodate,” Shiro says. “My parents and sisters still have a house there. I’m going to visit them in the summer.”

“...What’s it like?” Keith asks hesitantly. He doesn’t know why he asks, but for some reason he needs to find out.

“What’s my home like? It’s cozy, I guess. Always busy. Full of life, you could say. It’s crazy, but I miss all that bustle and noise.”

“Is it nice?”

Shiro chuckles, shaking his head ruefully. “It is. Sometimes I go back to visit and it feels like I’ll never get to leave, but I miss them as soon as I do. They’re family, you know?”

He doesn’t know, but he nods anyway.

* * *

Shiro leaves on the Kerberos mission a few weeks before Keith’s birthday.

He doesn’t forget. At the goodbye ceremony, he presses a small package into Keith’s hand and pulls him into a tight hug. Keith grits his teeth, pressing his hands against Shiro’s back too hard, like he might keep him there if he refuses to let go. Shiro pats Keith on the shoulder and pulls away, going to join his team. A teary-eyed man and woman he doesn’t recognize crowd in to hug Shiro next, their eyes growing wetter as they do. Keith figures they must be his parents. He watches from afar as they say their goodbyes, the distance between him and his only friend growing bigger and bigger the longer it goes on. He slips the package into his bag and thinks,  _ it’s only for a few weeks. You’ll be okay on your own. _

Shiro smiles and waves and boards the ship and Keith watches as he leaves. He feels an unmistakable sense of loss, like an unending pit in his stomach, and does what he does best; pretends it isn’t there. He doesn’t think about the only person he’s remotely close to at the Garrison flying miles and miles away, leaving him to fend for himself once again.

It’s not hard. He eats, he sleeps, he goes to class. He doesn’t think about Shiro, he doesn’t think about the Kerberos mission, he doesn’t think about losing the home he’d thought he’d found in his friend. Because homes can’t be in other people, he tells himself. They’re just places people go when they have nowhere else to be, and that’s not what Shiro was to him.

Classes are easy. Training is easy. It’s all remarkably easy and remarkably stupid and he finds himself waking up every morning wishing he could leave and never come back. His roommates don’t talk to him anymore, don’t invite him out to parties or pull chairs out at their lunch table for him. It doesn’t matter.

His teachers praise him and give him special treatment and tell him that his family must be so proud, that he’ll go home a hero. He walks away from them without a word and eventually they stop, too.

But soon enough he can’t help but think about Shiro. There’s not much else to do, anymore, so he does. He thinks about Shiro, up in space being an explorer, and he thinks about his family in Japan, and he thinks about his empty, quiet dorm room. He doesn’t open the package.

A few weeks pass. He doesn’t get to talk to Shiro (although he knows the Garrison’s technology is capable) but he does get a few messages. Nothing long, just things the communicators will be able to remember easily.  _ Take care of yourself _ and  _ I’ll be back soon, okay? _ Shiro doesn’t say that he misses him, and for that Keith is glad. He doesn’t want Shiro to miss him. He just wants him to come back.

And then there are no messages for a while. There’s no news of the Kerberos mission. He doesn’t ask about it, but he wants to so badly, to know when Shiro’s coming back, when he can stop being alone.

And then the announcement is made. And Keith goes back to not thinking.

* * *

He wanders back to his dorm quietly, avoiding eye contact and pretending he doesn’t hear Hunk say “Hey, buddy,” in the hall. It doesn’t matter.

He’s just turning the corner to get to his room when he hears someone from the other side yell “Hunk, wait up!” and immediately crashes into that someone. He’s so caught up in not thinking about Shiro that he loses his balance and the two of them fall to the ground unceremoniously. He hears something that sounds distinctly like a head smacking against the ground and a cursed “Jesus!” coming from next to him, and he just barely manages to catch himself on his forearms before he meets the same fate. He sits up as quickly as he can and looks over at the other figure, wondering which one of Hunk’s friends he needs to pretend to be sorry to.

The boy on his left groans as he rises to his knees, rubbing the back of his head and wincing. “Ugh,” he says, opening one eye and squinting at Keith. “Guess I won’t be sleeping on my back anytime soon.”

“I’m sorry,” Keith says automatically. It sounds ungenuine even to him, but it’s too late to try again, and he doesn’t particularly care if he comes off as rude anymore.

“Ah, it was my fault,” the guy says, shaking his head and standing slowly. He looks uncomfortable. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. Don’t worry about it.”

Keith doesn’t know what to say. His mind’s still kind of stuck on Shiro, on his parents and how they’d cried when he’d left and how they’ll find out about it and who will tell them and what it will feel like. He stares at the boy in front of him and tries to open his mouth, force words to come out. Nothing does.

“I’m really sorry about that,” the boy says, but he’s already looking down the hallway for his friend. He glances back at Keith, smiles hesitantly, and turns the corner. He disappears.

Keith sighs, moving to stand up as well, when he feels something small and papery under his hand. He glances down and sees the package Shiro had given him lying on the ground. It must have fallen out of his bag. He scoops it up quickly and feels something sharp poke into his palm.  _ Oh no. _

He holds the package delicately and rushes to his room, blinking back the blur of something he’d rather not name and thinking,  _ please no, please don’t take this from me too _ .

He unfolds the paper and looks inside, shaking. There’s a framed photo of him and Shiro from only a few weeks before he’d left, the glass of the frame shattered and sticking up at odd angles. The largest piece is sticking straight up, the tip decorated with a single drop of his blood, and the other side breaking through the paper right where Shiro’s smiling face had been.

He clutches his hand and feels a sharp pain where the glass had poked him, feels his fingernails digging deep into his skin, and he thinks,  _ it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it was only a picture _ . But he’s filled with that sense of loss again, so strong he can hardly bear it.

He opens his window and drops the frame and the ruined photo down, down, until he can’t see it anymore, and then he wipes the blood from his hand onto his jeans and he grabs a bag and starts packing.

* * *

His shack feels more like home than Shiro had.

Maybe it’s because it’s a place and not a person. He still believes that homes can’t be people, because if he did he thinks he might have lost his only home and he doesn’t want that. His shack is decorated with calendars and notebook papers covered in messy scrawling handwriting that doesn’t quite look like his but can’t be anybody else’s, so it must be. There’s a bed, a table, two old wooden chairs with chipping finish. There are even little dusty curtains over the windows with ancient velcro straps to keep them open when he wants them to be.

He doesn’t have a lot to do in the shack, and he doesn’t have to go to school anymore, so he starts exploring to fill his free time. Rebuilds an old hoverbike and takes it on test drives. He thinks,  _ the shack may be my home now, but if I lost it, would it really matter? _ So he goes further and further, uncaring of keeping track of where he’d come from, and one day he comes across something incredible.

She stands higher than he can accurately measure without some kind of tool. Her eyes are dull and dark and empty, and she’s a beautiful blue color that’s been darkened with age and abandonment. He wants to fix her up, but she won’t let him near her. She too is waiting to go home.

Keith visits her often. He talks to her. He tries to get her to let him in. She doesn’t speak to him, but she communicates through emotion and thought and something he doesn’t quite understand. He thinks it might be a bond, though it’s weak and static-laced.

On her clearer days, she tells him that she misses her partner. She wants him back. She asks Keith to go out and find him.

_ So I can go home, _ she says.

_ What is a home? _ he asks her. Her eyes darken the slightest bit and she seems to close herself off from him.

_ Find my partner _ , she says. And eventually he does.

* * *

The blue lion responds much more actively to Lance than she had to Keith, but he can still understand her. He feels the same waves of mental communication, dampened by their differences but still present. Lance seems to feel the same waves, only stronger and clearer. He says, “I think it’s talking to me,” and everyone looks at him like he’s insane, and Keith plays along because he doesn’t want to explain that he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

They let her fly them to a castle, sitting on an old planet off the maps of the Garrison. It’s nothing like Keith has ever seen before.

_ We’re here _ , the blue lion announces, opening her mouth to let them out.

“We’re here,” Lance echoes, staring at the castle with awe. “Right where we’re supposed to be.”

* * *

Keith has changed his mind yet again. He has never had a home, not in Shiro and not in the shack. He doesn’t even bother asking Red if she is his home; he knows that she isn’t. She’s his partner, he’s her paladin, they’re a team, and they’re so much more than that, but they’re not each other’s homes.

Lance throws around the word  _ home _ like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t matter. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Lance talks to Blue about  _ home _ when he thinks no one can hear him. Keith shouldn’t be able to, but he can. His dull connection with Blue still seems to be active, despite the fact that she chooses to ignore him when he tries to speak to her. He has better luck when he’s in his lion and she can help deliver messages, but Blue seems to be able to sense the difference between Red talking and Keith talking.

Still, Keith asks. He asks about Voltron, the paladins, the castle. He asks about the lions. Sometimes, when he’s at his lowest, he asks about home.

Lance catches him once, when they’re forming Voltron and Keith is feeling just pathetic enough to reach out to Blue through Red and ask her,  _ what is a home? What does it feel like? _ He’s becoming obsessed, needy, clinging onto the idea of a place he doesn’t know of, one that belongs to someone else. He asks Blue like he’d asked Shiro once, so long ago. He asks Blue because he’s not brave enough to ask Lance or Hunk or Pidge.

But Lance catches him, and after the battle’s been won and they’re all winding down, he sits next to Keith and looks at him seriously.

“Why are you talking to Blue like that?” he asks, his voice smooth and even and curious. Keith swallows.

“I don’t know,” he says. It tastes bad to admit he’d even been reaching out to her.

“You ‘don’t know’ why you’re talking to my lion? About things only  _ I _ talk to her about?” Lance sounds accusatory now, leaning further into Keith’s space. “Did you overhear us or something? You trying to dig up my story?”

“I don’t know,” Keith says again, angry. “I’m sorry, alright? I won’t do it again.”

They sit in agitated silence for a minute, staring each other down. Keith feels tired and placeless and lost. He wants to go to his room.

He starts to get up, but suddenly Lance is pulling him back down. “Wait,” he says. “I can tell you. If you want.”

Keith hesitates. He wants. He wants to hear about Lance’s home; what it feels like, what it looks like, what it sounds and smells like and if Lance misses it and everything. Slowly, he nods.

“It’s like. Like this feeling of- You wanted to know what it felt like, right?” Lance asks, pausing. “Well, it feels like a lot of different things. Like when your mom gives you a hug and when your dog comes to sit next to you and lays its head on your leg, or like when it’s snowing outside but it’s warm and cozy where you are and you just settle down with a mug of hot cocoa and- And you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No,” Keith admits, shaking his head. He’s never even had hot cocoa.

“Okay, let me try again.” Lance sighs, chewing on his lip thoughtfully. “It feels… It feels warm. And inviting. Like you belong there, and there’s nowhere else in the world you’d ever want to be. When you come home, it’s like… You get to drop all your guards and let go of everything and be yourself. And people will love you anyway.”

“I guess it feels like love,” he says finally with a soft smile. Keith doesn’t smile back. He feels even more confused than he had before.

“Thank you,” he says anyway, slowly, because it feels like Lance just shared something incredibly personal with him. Lance nods generously.

“It was nothing,” he says. “I’m sorry if it wasn’t what you were looking for, though. You know, I kind of hear you talking to Blue sometimes, too. I don’t know why, but I can feel what you’re saying through her. You’ve been wondering this a long time, haven’t you?”

“I guess so,” Keith admits.

“Homesick?”

“It’s not that.” He tries to find the words to explain, but he can’t come up with anything that seems right. “It’s just. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a home before. I guess I wouldn’t know even if I did.”

Lance stares at him for a while, all traces of his usual confidence and playfulness gone. Keith stares back defiantly, but he’s nervous. Is Lance judging him? Does he think Keith is being stupid? What is he thinking?

“We can fix this,” Lance says at last, nodding slowly. “Yeah. We can- No, we  _ have _ to. Come with me.”

* * *

Hunk says “Hey, buddy,” when Lance knocks on his door. Then he sees Keith behind him and grins.

“Hunk, we need hot cocoa,” Lance says with absolutely no context. “Or at the very least something chocolatey. How fast do you think you could make it?”

“Oh, probably five minutes,” Hunk says with no hesitation. Clearly they’ve been here before. “What’s the occasion?”

“We’re gonna drink it in front of the fridge and pretend it’s snowing,” Lance says. Keith stares at him like he’s insane. “What? If we’re gonna do this whole home thing, we’re gonna do it right. Just trust me, okay?”

“Okay,” Keith says unsurely, trailing after Lance and Hunk to the kitchen. He watches as Hunk produces mugs, brown powdery stuff, milk, fluffy white marshmallows, and a kettle. Hunk pours milk into the kettle, sets it over the stove, and starts measuring the brown stuff into the mugs.

“Lance, you don’t have to do this,” Keith says quietly. He doesn’t need Lance’s pity, or Hunk’s or Pidge’s. He doesn’t need to know what a home feels like, he just… wants.

He wants a lot of things these days. He wants to prove himself in battle. He wants to talk to Shiro,  _ really _ talk, about what had happened while he was gone. He wants to understand this strange bond between himself and Blue and Red and Lance. And yeah, he really wants to know what it feels like to have a home.

“Keith, shut up,” Lance says, crossing his arms. “We’re a team. Teams help each other out, even when they don’t have to.”

Hunk pulls the kettle off the stovetop and pours milk into the different cups. He’s set out seven, one for each of the paladins and two for Coran and Allura. Keith watches absently as he stirs the powder into the milk and drops a few marshmallows into each before decorating them with whipped cream and a touch more powder. “Here you guys go,” he says, sliding two mugs over the counter and stacking the rest onto a cookie sheet. “I’m gonna go hand these out. Good luck with your snow thing.”

“Thanks!” Lance calls after him, cradling the mug between his hands. “Come on, Keith, we’ve got work to do.”

He motions for Keith to follow him to the fridge, cracking the door open and sitting next to it.

“You were serious?” Keith raises an eyebrow, but follows Lance’s lead. After all, he’s the expert.

“Of course! We gotta recreate the moment, dude.”

Keith rolls his eyes and takes a sip of hot cocoa. It burns his lip, but his mouth is coated in sweet warmth with just a little bit of melted marshmallow fluff. It reminds him of those Christmas specials on the TV, the ones his classmates had always been so excited about because so-and-so gets together with so-and-so, or his parents come home, or her mother is pregnant or whatever. But it’s better than that. More real.

“Verdict?” Lance presses, watching him with interest. Keith glances down at his cup.

“It’s good,” he says. “Really sweet.”

“Oh, you have no idea. Hunk went super tame this time, but he can make hot cocoas that’ll melt your teeth like acid. He calls them sugar bombs.”

Lance sits back, taking another sip of his drink. Keith does the same. The marshmallow and whipped cream stick to his lip and the hot cocoa burns his tongue, but he doesn’t mind.

“So? Does this answer your question?” Lance asks, raising an eyebrow. Keith takes a minute to think before slowly shaking his head.

“It’s good,” he says again, but he’s not talking about the drink this time. “But I don’t know. It just feels like hot cocoa in front of the fridge.”

“Hm…” Lance scratches his chin thoughtfully. Keith wonders if he’s thinking of a good way to excuse himself from the situation. He’s just about to thank Lance and excuse himself for him when Lance says, “I guess we just need to try harder, then.”

* * *

It’s a long process.

And it starts with his room.

“Yeah, this isn’t gonna work,” Lance says as soon as they enter. Keith frowns indignantly.

“What? It’s totally clean,” he says, subtly kicking an old pair of jeans out of the way. Lance turns back around and shakes his head.

“It’s not that it’s dirty,” he explains, “it just doesn’t have any of you in it. You can’t call this place your room; it’s just the place you sleep in.”

Keith doesn’t follow. Doesn’t Lance sleep in his room? Isn’t that where everyone in the castle sleeps? He doesn’t spend a bunch of time in there, anyway, so it’s not like he needs it to look nice. If he wants to chill out, he can do that in the common area, and if he wants to be alone he can hang out with Red.

“We’ve gotta get you some posters or photos or something,” Lance says, surveying the room slowly. “Right now your walls are just kinda sad. I doubt we can find good Earth posters, but maybe we can get some alien artwork or buy a camera or something.”

“Why can’t we just keep it like this?” Keith asks, crossing his arms. His room isn’t important to him. It doesn’t matter.

“Because it’s not  _ you _ . If it weren’t for your clothes and stuff, this place would just look like any other room.” Lance scratches his chin and frowns. “Did you bring anything with you that you could hang up?”

Keith thinks about Shiro’s picture, the glass breaking through the tough paper and the drop of blood decorating the point. “No,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “I brought a map.”

“That’s a start!” Lance exclaims, smiling. “Get it out, I’ll go get some tape.”

When Lance returns, he takes the map from Keith and sticks it to the wall with tape. “Perfect,” he says, standing back to admire his work.

“What’s the point of this?” Keith asks, frowning at the single piece of paper. If anything, it makes his room seem even sadder.

“I know it’s not much, but soon enough this’ll start feeling more like your room,” Lance explains. “And then the castle will start to feel like your home. And after that you’ll know what it feels like to have that kind of thing.”

Keith’s eyes widen in understanding. Lance isn’t trying to recreate the feeling of a home anymore.

He’s trying to help Keith make one for himself.

Gradually, his walls fill with different pictures and drawings and maps. Hunk sits with Keith for an hour one night and draws with him, even though Keith’s drawings are nothing to admire. When Hunk stands to go prepare dinner, he pushes his drawing into Keith’s hands.

“It’s for you,” he explains with a smile. “Put it up in your room for me, okay?”

Pidge digs old papers out of her bag and hands them to him one by one during one of their cleaning days. “This one’s from the day we first met,” she says, handing him a scribbled notebook sheet with the word  _ Voltron _ underlined in red pen on it. “You can keep it, if you want.”

Shiro surprises him with an early birthday gift; a cellphone much like Pidge’s, with a cute red cat charm attached. He sits with Keith and helps him set it up, then shows him how to send photos he takes to a printer in the castle. “Make sure you take a lot of pictures, okay?” he says, setting a hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith takes one right then and there and makes Shiro go to the printer and bring it back for him.

He and Lance sit in front of the fridge sometimes, cups of Hunk’s hot cocoa in their hands and blankets around their shoulders. Sometimes the others join them, and sometimes they just sit alone. It’s strange, but nice. Keith thinks this might be a tradition.

He takes lots of pictures. And he hangs them up on his wall.

* * *

“Bond? Between you and a different lion?” Allura scratches her chin thoughtfully. “I’ve heard of paladins switching lions in dire circumstances before, but I’ve never heard of something like this. Are you sure it’s  _ you _ speaking to Blue?”

Keith thinks back to all the times he’d asked Blue questions, all the way back to the desert when he’d been completely alone. “I think so,” he says, but he’s not sure. “Maybe Red has something to do with it?”

“The red lion and the blue lion have always had a special connection,” Allura agrees. “They can communicate with each other from vast distances, even in the most dire of situations. But a paladin communicating with a different lion? It’s unheard of.”

“I can  _ hear _ her, Allura,” Keith insists. “Not as clearly as Red, but still. She’s talking to me, I  _ know _ it. And it’s gotten stronger lately for some reason.”

“Keith, I’m not sure if…” Allura sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Then her eyes light up. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Keith prompts. Allura nods to herself thoughtfully.

“Yes, it could be… Bonds between lions and paladins are very strong, almost unbreakable. And bonds between the lions themselves are just as strong. Is it possible…” Allura looks up at him curiously. “Is it possible that it’s not Blue you’ve bonded with, but Lance?”

* * *

“I remember running into you back at the Garrison,” Lance says one day. They’re sitting in the common room, eating crackers and doing nothing.

“What?” Keith asks, turning to him and wiping crumbs on the leg of his jeans. Surely Lance can’t remember that particular incident. It was over a year ago.

“Yeah, remember? I was trying to catch up with Hunk and I wasn’t paying attention and then I crashed into you.” Lance grins sheepishly. “I didn’t even check and see if you were okay. To be honest, you were kind of intimidating back then.”

Keith blinks, confused. “I was intimidating?”

“Well, yeah. You were all broody and lone-wolf. You never even said ‘hi’ back to Hunk.”

Keith thinks back to the Garrison, as much as it pains him to do so. To his surprise, he finds that he can’t remember waving back at Hunk, or smiling at his roommates, or accepting any of the invitations his peers had extended to him. Nowadays he can’t even imagine leaving Pidge hanging when she holds her hand up for a high five, or choosing to sit in his room alone instead of being with Lance in the common room. What a different person he must seem like to them.

“Of course, it’s not like you’re like that now,” Lance says, echoing his thoughts. “Now you’re all… I don’t know, cool, I guess. I have to say, if someone told me a year ago that we’d become friends, I totally wouldn’t have believed them.”

“Me, either,” Keith agrees.

“But, you know, I think of it as a good thing.” Lance leans back, crossing his arms behind his head. “I like being your friend.”

“Me, too,” Keith says. And he finds that he really, really does.

* * *

He watches the Galra laser point directly at the castle. The castle, with its weakened defenses and its low, low power and its lack of the only guardian that could possibly save it. He watches the laser power up, glowing purple in the darkness that surrounds them. And he takes a deep breath and makes a decision.

He needs to protect his home.

Red, bounding across the surface of the planet they’d been shopping on before the Galra caught them, seems to sense his intentions almost immediately. She gives a low rumble of sad, melancholy approval as he steers her to the left, turning in the direction of the castle. She doesn’t feel defeated or fearful, but resigned, grim. He feels the same.

The light canon is charged almost all the way now, its glow almost too bright to look at. And they’re only a few leaps away, charging as quickly as they can. Keith steers Red to the left sharply, driving her straight towards the canon as it aims directly towards them now. Keith closes his eyes, feels rather than sees the fire inside her light up and manifest inself in a stream from her mouth. And  _ oh, no, _ he feels something else, too.

Fierce, loyal determination, and a willingness to sacrifice everything to protect the only thing that matters. And it’s not coming from either of them. It’s coming from-

“No!” he screams, but it’s too late.

Blue calls out in distress as the light canon shoots her into the ground, inches in front of Red’s nose. She has only enough time to shoot a razor-sharp slab of ice into the mouth of the machine before the light in her eyes fades to a dull yellow. Keith watches with horror as she’s driven a few yards back from the force of the impact, tumbling and hitting the ground and finally rolling to a stop. She doesn’t get up again.

Red is moving before Keith even commands her to, bounding towards the blue lion with long strides and shoving Galra soldiers out of her way. Both of them are solely focused on the lifeless lion lying before them. Keith feels his heart pounding in his chest and blood rushing in his ears and there’s a distinct lack of the hum of communication he’s gotten so used to from Blue and Lance. There’s nothing coming from either of them now.

Red opens her mouth and Keith tumbles out and hits the ground running, shoving his way inside Lance’s lion and sprinting to his friend’s motionless body. There’s blood dripping down Lance’s forehead from a cut just below his hairline, and he’s out cold, breathing shallowly.

He hears Red roar furiously from outside, feels a wave of heat as she blasts a circle of fire around them, protecting them from the swarms of Galra soldiers attacking. He barely processes it. He picks Lance up from where he’d landed on the floor of Blue’s cockpit, settles him against the wall. Lance doesn’t stir.

“Wake up,” Keith whispers, resisting the urge to shake the other paladin. Nothing. “Wake up!” he hisses again, and then he does shake him and Lance makes a noise of protest before pitching forward into Keith’s arms. Now he’s  _ really _ out cold.

“You can’t do this,” Keith says, gripping Lance’s shoulders tightly. “You can’t go out like this. This wasn’t how- I didn’t mean to-”

“Hey, buddy,” Hunk says through the comms, sounding slightly panicked. “See if you can get Blue up. Get her to fly back to the castle. Allura and Coran can take care of Lance, but we need you out here with us-”

Keith can’t hear him anymore. He wipes the blood away from Lance’s face, tries to ignore the fact that his friend is pale and motionless and blood covered. “Please wake up,” he says. He doesn’t beg. He just. Says it.

Something in his head echoes the thought, and then Blue stirs. Her eyes light up the slightest bit, and her controls flicker back to life. She sends out a signal; not words, but an invitation.

Keith pulls Lance to the pilot’s seat and sets him down gently, then stares at the controls. Blue sends another signal, urging him to command her.  _ For Lance, _ she thinks.  _ Please. _

Keith takes the controls and tilts them upwards. Blue rights herself, crouching as if preparing to leap as soon as Keith gives the word.

He thinks about the castle, the healing pods, Allura and Coran, and she seems to get the idea. Her mouth falls open just enough for him to get out, but instead of jumping back to his own lion, he turns to Lance.

“Please wake up, Lance. We need you,” he says before he leaves. Just in case he can hear it. It sounds like begging, even to his ears. Maybe it is.

Because maybe it’s true that homes can’t be other people, but people can be parts of homes, and Lance is definitely a part of his.

* * *

Keith sits in front of the healing pod, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, a cup of hot cocoa gone cold sitting full in his hands. He’s very, very tired, and he’s afraid that he might drop the cup. And that’s not an option.

Because it’s for Lance. When he gets out. Which will be any minute now.

It’s been hours.

It’s been hours and he’s thinking about their stupid first meeting and the stupid picture he’d been so upset about destroying, the stupid amount of time they’d spent in front of the fridge together, the stupid photos and maps and drawings and notes taped to the walls of the room that had only just started to feel like home, and the stupid hot cocoa in his hand going cold because Lance  _ won’t wake up, why won’t he wake up? _

He feels two beings reaching out to him, comforting him in the solace of his mind, curling themselves around him and the healing pod and whispering soft, reassuring words inside his head. Blue’s voice is stronger than ever now, now that she knows he’d put his life on the line for her paladin. And Red’s is laced with worry, not only for him and Lance, but for Blue as well. They really are a close pair, Keith thinks, letting his eyes fall shut.

Of course, this is the exact moment the door of the healing pod hisses open and Lance stumbles out, crashing to his knees a mere foot away from Keith and looking about two seconds away from toppling over. Blue tears herself away from Keith’s mind to curl around her paladin protectively, whispering words of strength and relief and joy. Keith lunges to his feet as well, steadying Lance and laughing with tears in his eyes and the cup of hot cocoa is tipped over and forgotten as it spills onto the ground. It doesn’t matter.

Lance looks dazed and out of it, but he smiles as Keith throws an arm around him, helping him sit and leaning him back against the pod, and then Hunk is there saying “Hey, buddy,” and pulling both of them into a tight hug, and Pidge appears and wraps herself around Lance like she’ll never let him go and Shiro and Allura and Coran follow her lead, and it’s just then, at that exact moment, that Keith understands.

_ This is a home, _ he thinks as Lance says, “It’s good to be back,” and Hunk says, “We were so worried!” and Pidge says, “Keith especially,” and they all laugh about it.

_ This is a home, _ he knows as Shiro chastises both of them for being reckless and not thinking ahead, as Allura promises to give them a stern lecture after everything calms down, as Coran shakes his head like he can’t even be bothered to think about any of that right now.

_ This is a home, _ he thinks, feeling Red and Blue retreat from their paladins and wrap around each other protectively, healing from the battle in the comfort of each others’ presence. And as Lance smiles and meets his eyes and whispers, “You felt it, too,” Keith amends his statement.

_ This is my home, _ he thinks.  _ This is where I’m supposed to be. _


End file.
